• Evidence of their students’ learning
• Evidence that their assessment of student learning is valid
• Evidence that the program’s continuous improvement and quality control are based on information about its students’ learning
• Evidence of the program’s capacity for quality

Through the Inquiry Brief, the program faculty members present qualitative or quantitative evidence that their graduates are competent, qualified, and caring and that the institution has the capacity to offer a quality program.

The program faculty members document the evidence they possess about what their graduates have learned, the validity of their assessment of that learning, and the basis on which the program faculty makes its decisions to improve its program. To do this, the faculty members must show that they have a valid method for determining what their students have learned and accomplished. Then they must show that their students have learned the subject matter they will teach, the pedagogical subject matters of the field of education, and, most important, that their students can teach effectively.

The faculty members must also show that they use what they learn about their students’ learning to both improve the program and the system they have in place for monitoring and ensuring the quality of the program. Finally, they must show that they have plans to undertake a systematic inquiry into the factors that affect the quality of the program and their students’ accomplishments.

The Inquiry Brief focuses on what the program faculty wants and needs to know about the program’s performance. It includes the claims a faculty makes about its graduates’ knowledge and skill, a rationale for assessments of those claims, a description of the psychometric properties of the evidence that is presented to support the claims, the findings related to the claims, and a discussion of what the evidence means and what has been learned from it. In addition, the Inquiry Brief reports on the faculty’s efforts to evaluate the rigor of its own quality control system and the adequacy of the program’s capacity to offer a quality program.

The Inquiry Brief is based primarily on existing documents, such as reports of ongoing inquiry, other accrediting and state review reports, and institutional research and publications. It contains only information and analysis relevant to the case that the program prepares competent, caring, and qualified professionals. The Inquiry Brief is the length of a research monograph, about 50 pages.

Content of the Inquiry Brief Proposal

Faculty members representing new programs or programs that are in the process of collecting evidence for their claims may submit for preaccreditation an Inquiry Brief Proposal, in which they propose the method by which they will find the evidence that will show that their graduates are competent, qualified, and caring, and that the program meets TEAC’s three quality principles and standards for capacity.

The Inquiry Brief Proposal is appropriate for new programs or programs that have been significantly revised in recent years. The program faculty does not yet have sufficient evidence for its claims of student learning but has evidence of its capacity for program quality. The program also has evidence of a sound quality control system, evidence that the institution is committed to the program, and a plan and rationale for acquiring evidence over time to support its claims.

The Inquiry Brief Proposal is a research proposal, a scholarly work like a grant or dissertation proposal, in which the program faculty proposes the method by which it will find evidence (qualitative, quantitative, or both) to demonstrate that the program’s graduates are competent, qualified, and caring. The program faculty demonstrates that it has a reasonable basis for thinking (1) that the program’s students have learned the subject matters they will teach; (2) that the students have solid pedagogical knowledge; and (3) that the students can teach effectively. In addition, the program faculty demonstrates that the methods proposed for determining what the students have learned and accomplished are credible.

The faculty members also show how they will use what they learn about their students’ learning to improve both the program and the system they have in place for monitoring and ensuring the quality of the program. In addition, they present their plans to undertake a systematic inquiry into the factors that affect the quality of the program and their students’ accomplishments. They also provide evidence that the institution has the capacity to offer a quality program.

The Inquiry Brief Proposal is based primarily on existing documents, such as reports of ongoing inquiry, other accrediting and state review reports, and institutional research and publications. It contains only information and analysis relevant to the case that the program will be able to bring forward evidence that it prepares competent, caring, and qualified professionals. The Inquiry Brief Proposal is about 50 pages. (See details of the content of the Inquiry Brief Proposal.)

Required elements of the Brief

TEAC makes three requirements for the Brief.

1. Verifiable authorship and faculty endorsement
The authors of the Inquiry Brief or Inquiry Brief Proposal must provide their names and roles in the institution and must identify themselves as having taken responsibility for the document. In addition, the entire program faculty must formally endorse the Inquiry Brief or Inquiry Brief Proposal. Typically this is done in a footnote stating that the Brief was presented to, discussed, and approved by the faculty, and the date on which this occurred.

2. Brevity and linguistic precision
TEAC also requires that the Brief’s authors strive for brevity and linguistic precision:

· Brevity means using no more words than necessary to make the point. The Brief, as its name implies, is brief and is about inquiry. It should be no longer than 50 pages.
· Precise language. Producing an Inquiry Brief or Inquiry Brief Proposal calls for a kind of writing that is different from the usual self-study or program approval document. The language of the Brief must be precise and clear.

Why does precise language matter to TEAC? TEAC requires clear and precise language because of the kinds of claims and supporting evidence that TEAC asks of its candidates for accreditation. The program faculty’s claims and the measures used to support them should be very specific. Vague, ambiguous, imprecise language obscures the goals and accomplishments of the program.

Checking the precision of the language and evidence is a key task in TEAC’s formative evaluation and the audit of the Brief. TEAC staff and auditors focus on language and precision in order to determine the degree to which the Brief means exactly what the pro-gram faculty intends. To verify the statements in the Brief, the auditors must be able to determine precisely what the authors meant; imprecise language complicates the verification process.

3. Seven required components
TEAC requires that the Brief include seven components as: Program overview, Claims and rationale, Methods, Results, Discussion and plan, References, and Appendices.

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